Writers’ workshops span genres, styles

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This article was published 15/11/2014 (4338 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba Writers’ Guild is offering a month’s worth of artistic professional development in the next few weeks, featuring national and local writers sharing their expertise.

Winnipeg graphic-novel scribe GMB Chomichuk offers a two-day workshop on writing for graphic media Nov. 22 and 29. Chomichuk, who won Manitoba’s Best Illustrated Book award in 2011 for his serial The Imagination Manifesto, has three new graphic novels about to launch: The Underworld, Cassie and Tonk and Infinitum.

On Nov. 23, Edmonton novelist Marina Endicott (The Little Shadows, Good to a Fault) will draw from her experience in theatre in a workshop called Respect for Character.

On Nov. 30, Saskatchewan YA and horror author Arthur Slade leads a workshop on using elements of horror and fantasy in writing, and making them believable.

For details on any of the workshops call 944-8013.

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Winnipeg’s Peanut Butter Press is launching a pair of new children’s books this week.

First up is a seasonal story, with Christmas and Hanukkah themes, by author and illustrator Deborah Froese. Froese launches Mr. Jacobson’s Window, about a girl who learns that first perceptions can be misleading, tomorrow at 2 p.m. at McNally Robinson.

A U.K. trip and a video of “extreme shepherding” inspired Harriet Zaidman‘s latest illustrated children’s book.

Sherman and the Sheep Shape Contest (illustrated by Sonia Nadeau) is the story of a sheep who gets away from his flock as his shepherd is trying to get it ready for a contest where animals are herded to form shapes.

The book launch is scheduled for Nov. 20 at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson.

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Winnipeg’s Great Plains Publications is celebrating along with author Jan Andrews after her YA novel The Silent Summer of Kyle McGinley was named one of the finalists in this year’s Forest of Reading promotion by the Ontario Library Association.

The Forest of Reading promotes books for different levels of readers and involves more than 250,000 participants. Andrews’s book, about a boy who makes a vow of silence after being bumped from one foster home to another, is the second Great Plains title to be included in the Forest of Reading in the last two years, following Colleen Nelson‘s Fall last year.

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Coach House Press and the Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies at the U of W present a quartet of poets with works focusing on gender, history and the impact of the settlement of the west, Nov. 18 at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson.

Rachel Zolf — daughter of famed raconteur broadcaster Larry Zolf — launches her fifth book, Janey’s Arcadia, described as “a pirate score of error-ridden historical and current documents… to decry the ongoing violence of Canadian colonialism.”

Also on the bill are the U of W’s Roewan Crowe (Quivering Land) and Trish Salah (Lyric Sexology), plus Katherena Vermette, the Governor General’s Award winning author of North End Love Songs.

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Huge crowds packed The Forks during the 1999 Pan Am Games for a free performance by Newfoundland’s Great Big Sea — one of many manifestations of Prairie passion for Canada’s youngest and easternmost province.

So there may be a built-in audience for the memoir by lead singer Alan Doyle‘s Where I Belong: Small Town to Great Big Sea. Doyle lands at McNally Robinson Nov. 19 at 7 p.m. for his launch.

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